Building a Brewery, 8 Things That Get Overlooked

When laying out the brewery, plan a few additional outlets for any small miscellaneous equipment that require power (can’t forget about the radio)

Flexible Sprayer Nozzle at a 3-Bay Sink

Why make all the cleaning harder for your brew team, provide a flexible sprayer at the 3-bay sink to allow the team to easily wash big and small equipment.

Brewery Hand Sink/Eye Sink

A hand sink is required by the Health Department, but consider many of the attachments that can also be installed. An easy safety addition would be to include an emergency eyewash attachment.

Brewery Access

How will you get new/old tanks out of the space as you grow without shutting down your operations? If you plan to grow in the space you are in, make sure you have a means to get new equipment in and out easily

Tank Clearance

While it is easy to rationalize getting the biggest tanks for your buck, and squeezing them into your space, brewers should consider leaving enough room to access the top and the sides of the tank to allow periodic cleaning. This is especially important at the top where many CIP systems require additional clearance for removal and maintenance.

Brewery Hours and HVAC Requirements

Many brewers we have worked with don’t often operate the brewery at the same time the tap room is open. While there are some exceptions, often you can reduce the anticipated load on your HVAC by sharing your hours with your design team. By designing the activities to occur at separate times, the size requirements from the HVAC units can often be reduced.

Sink in Yeast Lab

Lab spaces come in many forms, but one thing that should be consistently planned for is plumbing for a sink. The sink will be useful both for hand washing after handling yeast cultures, as well as maintaining clean equipment to keep important yeast strains from getting contaminated.

Brewery Hose Bibb

Similar to providing additional outlets for electricity, plumbing for hose bibbs should also be considered. If your floors slope toward the drains as they should, you have the option to cut man hours in cleaning by providing a hose bibb and hose to spray down the floors toward the drains. Less time squeegeeing the floor means more time productively working on the next great beer recipe.